Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto"

Written: 2000.03.04 Last revised: 2001.05.17

Background

When it comes to belief systems, there are many ideas which, if
challenged, tend to provoke violent defensive reactions on the part
of their believers. Star Trek fans, a disproportionate number of
whom are pseudoscience afictionados, tend to become irritable when
reminded of the vast gulf between Trek pseudoscience and real
science. Creationists tend to become emotional and defensive when
reminded that their precious ideas may make for good religious
dogma, but they bear no resemblance whatsoever to science. And in
spite of the utter failure of communism in the twentieth century,
its defenders attack any criticism as "capitalist dogma".

Karl Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto in the middle of the 19th
century, which was a heady time in human history. The Industrial
Revolution was radically and rapidly changing society. New
technologies were coming out all the time, and many spoke of huge,
sweeping changes to come. The idea of "social engineering"
became popular; people believed that, armed with advancing
technology and an enlightened world view, they would be able to tear
down the rotten and dysfunctional society that thousands of years of
human civilization had slowly constructed, and replace it with a
new, improved version.

The problem with Marx's grandiose vision of social engineering is
that it assumes humans will play by rules which are against their
nature, and that a large industrialized economy is simple enough to
be centrally managed. Any engineer knows that when faced with an
enormously complex piece of machinery, it is much easier to tweak it
than it is to replace it. Complex systems such as societies and
economies tend to obey the laws of chaos theory; the short and
long-term effects of changes are unpredictable by even the most
brilliant economists and sociologists, so any attempts at "social
engineering" should be performed very carefully, and
very slowly. It is a laudable goal to improve society, but it should
be done through gradual change, not "revolution".

The funny thing is that communism does follow a twisted
sort of logic. If you accept its underlying premises, some of its
conclusions actually do make sense. However, you can't
accept its underlying premises. Humans won't work as hard without
self-interest to motivate them, as anyone familiar with the
behaviour of our evolutionary ancestors will quickly realize. The
collective self-interest of a nation of millions is much too remote
and abstract to have the emotional immediacy necessary to strongly
motivate most individuals. An economy of millions or hundreds of
millions of people is not simple enough to predict and
control from a central bureaucracy. People won't give up the
traditional family structure, which has existed (either as monogamy
or polygamy) in one form or another since the dawn of recorded
history. And absolute power does corrupt absolutely, even in
the hands of the benevolent Communist Party.

The Communist Manifesto

The first section of "The Communist Manifesto" is a
long-winded and repetitive rant about the evils of capitalism:

"Society as a whole is more and more splitting up
into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly
facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat." This is
Karl Marx's biggest mistake: his assumption that all of the
societal classes in an industrialized world will coalesce into two
remaining classes: wealthy industrial property owners and starving
labourers. The critical distinction is between people who work
for a living, and people whose money works for them. This is
no small distinction, and Marx's divisive description is still
echoed today by the political left wing. However, the analogy of
"hostile camps" suggests warfare, which in turn suggests
that one is somehow a traitor or a deserter if one moves from one
"camp" to the other. This is simply not the case; we all
strive to become "financially independent" (read:
"bourgeoisie") someday, and many of us achieve that goal,
even from the humblest beginnings. He also ignored the existence of
the middle class (which has actually grown since his era,
rather than shrinking away to nothing in his predicted
polarization). Most of the middle class has both employment and
investment income, and will eventually retire to live off their
money, thus making them the true middle ground between wage
earners and capitalists: at different stages of their lives, they
will be both. Since virtually the entirety of Marx's
argument for communism relies upon the assumption of two distinct,
polarized, hostile classes, the existence of a viable middle ground
literally cuts his knees out from under him.

"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every
occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It
has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the
man of science, into its paid wage laborers." This is
really just a repetition of his earlier attempt to pretend that
society is polarized into those who work and those who live off
their money. Now, I don't mean to suggest that our society, either
in its current state or in Karl Marx's time, is ideal. However, his
artificial polarization was an inaccurate description of events in
the 19th century, and his writings proved an inaccurate prediction
of events in the 20th century. Events have shown that a free-market
system does offer great opportunity for those with ambition
and intelligence, contrary to what Karl Marx predicted.
Professionals with valuable skills do work for their wages,
but it's not a prison; they also invest in things like houses and
retirement funds, and most of them will eventually retire on those
investments. Moreover, those who would defend him by saying that he
couldn't have known about future events would be well advised to
consider the fact that all of these objections were also raised in
his era. Clearly, his detractors knew something that he didn't.

"Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of
production, of exchange and of property, a society that has
conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is
like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of
the nether world whom he has called up by his spells."
Here he tries to portray one of the strengths of the free
market as a weakness, by complaining that someone should be in
"control". But why does someone have to be in
"control" of the economy? "Laissez-faire"
capitalism is based on the fact that free markets control
themselves. The laws of supply and demand and the
free-market forces of competition control the economy, without
any government bureacracy holding the reins. The strong survive,
the weak perish, and the group as a whole becomes stronger (it is
an historical irony that Darwin and Marx published within a dozen
years of each other, since Darwinian evolution is analogous to the
free-market system which eventually triumphed over Marxism). The
only role for the government of a true free-market economy is to
ensure free competition rather than monopoly (which destroys
choice), and to provide security and infrastructure for its
citizens. The vast disparity in living conditions between communist
states and free-market states is proof that the lack of a central
controlling authority is not the glaring weakness that he
claimed it to be.

"It is enough to mention the commercial crises
[recessions] that, by their periodical return, put the existence of
the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more
threateningly." Yet again, he describes one of the
strengths of a free market as a weakness. How can periodic
recessions be a strength, you ask? That's simple: like any
self-regulating system, a free market economy corrects itself
whenever it gets "out of whack". Sometimes, this
correction comes in the form of a recession, and sometimes, it
comes in the form of a boom. Either way, it's evidence of the free
market's self-regulating mechanism in action. Millions of people
subtly and collectively influence the cyclical direction of
countless separate industries through their spending and investing
choices (every dollar counts as a "vote" of sorts, making
the free market more democratic than the government in many ways).
Did you ever wonder why central banks often raise interest rates in
order to slow down an "overheated" economy? It's because
they understand that know that an excessive upswing must be
followed by a correspondingly violent downswing, so they try to
encourage the masses to invest more and spend less. At all times,
it is the masses who are truly in control of the economy,
while the government merely tries to nudge them in the right
direction. Compare this to the communist system, where the
government takes control of the economy away from the
masses. It is ironic that an economic system which purports to
fight for the masses will actually take away most of their power.

[Explaining recessions] "Because there is too much
civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too
much commerce." This is the third time he describes
a strength of capitalism as a weakness. Chronic over-production is
not a bad thing! It's actually a good thing, for two
reasons:

Availability of necessities.
When the supply of a product is controlled so that it matches
demand, there is always the risk that the government bureaucrats
who are doing this "matching" will make a mistake,
resulting in a supply shortfall (remember the Soviet bread
lines?). However, when there's an over-abundance of product, this
cannot happen. Consider the example of the fresh produce section
at your local supermarket. They throw out a lot of food,
because they chronically stock more than they can sell. Is this
bad? Of course not; it ensures that nobody with a job (or even a
welfare cheque) will starve, and it also lets us carefully pick
only the most ripe and appetizing food.

Freedom of consumer choice. When there are too
many products out there, all vying for your money, you have
the luxury of choosing which one you want. But Karl Marx's
communist government would take away your ability to choose what
you need and which supplier you'll use. The freedom to choose is
not a triviality; it is power. Why does the
government care what voters think, even if only during election
years? Because our votes give us the power to choose the other
party. Why do companies care what customers think? Because our
dollars give us the power to choose a competitor. In a free
market, the masses have the power to not only punish a company for
wrongdoing, but to totally destroy it, driving into
bankruptcy and erasing it from the face of the planet.

"Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the
division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all
individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman.
He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most
simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is
required of him." This is an example of Karl Marx's
absolutely incredible arrogance. How can an ivory tower
intellectual who never worked in a factory presume to know what
it's like? Unlike Marx (or his fans, most of whom have never set
foot inside a factory), I actually have worked in a highly
automated factory, and I have worked as a skilled
professional, co-operating with others to design and build
products. I mention this because it means that I can speak from
personal experience to refute his claims: when I see one of those
products rolling down the street as part of a finished automobile,
or sitting on a store shelf somewhere, I do feel a sense of
pride in workmanship. Karl Marx was wrong; you can take
pride in something that you made with the aid of technology or
through co-operative work. And if you doubt that, go down to
Bowling Green (Kentucky, USA), accost a worker at the Corvette
plant, and tell him that you think the Vette is built like shit.
You just might get an earful (or a sound beating).

The second section of "The Communist Manifesto" is a
long-winded and repetitive advertisement for communism, in which
every argument takes the form of a hideously distorted strawman
caricature of capitalism, followed by his model of communism and the
accompanying implicit message of: "there- isn't that better?".

He describes communists by saying that "they have no
interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a
whole." In other words, they're selfless and they have no
ambitions for power whatsoever. And if you believe that, I have
some swamp land in Florida to sell you. The reality of communism is
that every communist revolution in history has been precipitated by
a small group of people who gave themselves enormous power while
trampling upon the rights and freedoms of the people. Neo-marxists
defend this ugly history by saying that a "true"
communist would not commit the sins of Leninism, Maoism, Stalinism,
etc., but they fail to realize that communism seeks to take power
from the masses by its very nature, by replacing free
markets (which are controlled by the masses) and competing
corporations (which the masses can punish, reward, or even destroy)
with government monopolies, which the public has no power to
directly control (to say nothing of punishing or destroying them if
they are displeased with their performance).

"The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as
that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat
into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of
political power by the proletariat." Ludicrous fantasy. An
entire social class cannot seize power. Instead, it can only
appoint representatives to take that power. No matter what
flowery language Karl Marx chooses to use, the simple reality is
that government power will always be in the hands of the
few, regardless of whether that government is communist or
capitalist. The only question is how much power we want that
government to have, and Marx made the mistake of assuming that the
more power the government had, the more power the masses would
have. This is a very serious "have your cake and eat it too"
fallacy; you cannot simultaneously give more power to the masses
and to the government! Marx felt that free markets are
undemocratic and unfair, but in reality, free markets are actually
more democratic than governments, communist or otherwise.
They actually respond to the whims of the masses, while
governments only make promises. Look at Wal-Mart; its profits dwarf
that of every rich person's boutique and specialty store in
America. Now look at your federal capital: is there any venue there
where your average Wal-Mart customer would be taken seriously?

"In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be
summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."
This is actually untrue. The core of his theory is summed up in his
idea that society is polarized into subsistence wage earners and
people who live off their money. This is his suggestion for a
solution to that oversimplification, and it's a solution
which is never really justified. If we translate this from the
language of Marxism into the language of the free market, he is
saying that he wants to abolish your freedom to decide whether to
use your wages to buy something, or to invest. You will be forced
to spend every penny of every paycheque to buy state-supplied goods
and services (at prices and in quantities fixed by the state so
that there's none left over). If you attempted to put your money in
the bank and get interest on it, you would be a lawbreaker.

"The average price of wage labor is the minimum
wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is
absolutely requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a
laborer." In an industrialized world, no one will be paid
more than the bare minimum required to keep us alive? In the real
industrialized world (as opposed to his sterile imaginary world),
if you have a skill which is in demand, then you can command a
higher salary for your services. Conversely, if you have a skill
which is ridiculously commonplace (eg. if your resume lists
"literate in the English language" as your only job
skill), then you will get paid a pathetic wage. I can't believe
people still think of Karl Marx as some sort of genius when he
obviously didn't even understand the principles of supply and
demand.

"It has been objected that upon the abolition of
private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will
overtake us. According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to
have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those who acquire
anything, do not work." Naturally, he tries to deal with
one of the most popular criticisms of communism. He argues that the
idea of "incentive to work" is flawed because rich people
have no financial incentive to work, so their society should have
self-destructed through "sheer idleness". However, he
ignores the fact that many rich people are in fact idle (a
fact which he himself complains about, yet he ignores it
here), thus showing that a lack of incentive will keep
people from working. Those who do work do so either to make
sure they stay rich, or because they have replaced the
motivation of money with the motivation of power. Either
way, people only work because they have a personal incentive to do
so, and no one has ever produced a compelling argument that
this isn't the case.

"Abolition of the family! Even the most radical
flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists." As
well they should. It is a disgusting concept! Karl Marx believed
that the family structure was inherently exploitative, with
capitalists treating their wives and children as property and
bequeathing their accumulated assets to their children (he saw the
concept of inheritance as a horrible evil). His solution? Children
should be raised by the state, marriage and inheritance should be
eliminated, and noncommital sex should be the only form of
relationship. The man was a lunatic, and most people don't even
have any idea how extreme and unrealistic some of his views were,
because they've never bothered to read his Manifesto.

"Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and
daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of
common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each
other's wives. Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives
in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly
be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in
substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized
system of free love." Just like all of his other
arguments, he starts with an incredible lie about capitalist
society and then uses it to excuse himself for the obscenities of
communism. In this case, he defends his attack on monogamous
marriage by claiming that capitalists are incapable of being
monogamous anyway! Now, this may be true in Hollywood, but there
are lots of capitalists in the rest of the world who are
monogamous. In any case, after selling the fantastic lie that
monogamy doesn't exist, he argues that we should forget about
achieving this supposedly impossible goal and simply embrace "free
love", a euphemistic term for unbridled hedonism and sexual
promiscuity. As an aside, this idea resurfaced in the 1960's, with
no more success: it produced a generation with a soaring divorce
rate and disaffected children.

At this point, he finally gets down to business and lists
the ten commandments of communism:

"Abolition of property in land and application of
all rents of land to public purposes." In other words,
seizure of all real estate. No more worrying about saving money to
buy that house ... the government will take it away!

"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax."
After taking away your real estate, the government will take away
most of your income too. Wonderful.

"Abolition of all rights of inheritance."
Taking away the right to bequeath the fruits of your life's work
to your beloved children. How charming. It's one thing to tax
inheritance, particularly for the wealthy, but to confiscate it
entirely? That's simply unconscionable.

"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and
rebels." Ah, yes. The never-ending communist persecution
of "emigrants and rebels." Although neo-Marxists often
claim that "true" Marxism does not restrict the right to
live where you wish, we can see here that this is simply untrue:

Marx targeted emigrants
(presumably with something stronger than the general confiscation
of land; he probably meant that they should lose everything but
their underwear), because the free movement of people, goods and
services is anathema to Marxism. This is a reminder of a serious
problem with communism- it can only exist in isolation. A
communist society will be "contaminated" by contact
with a capitalist society, due to the capitalist habit of
broadcasting images of its wealth and materialism. Those images
act as a magnet for the "best and brightest," who will
be rewarded like princes under capitalism but treated no better
than the ignorant and useless under communism. However, a society
will not fare well if the "cream of the crop" leaves.
So what can they do? They can restrict access to capitalist
broadcasts and they can criminalize emigration. And of course,
this is precisely what real communist states have done. I
think we all recall the infamous Berlin wall.

Marx wished to persecute rebels, but how does one
specifically target rebels? In free societies, a rebel is only
arrested if he commits an act which violates one of the general
laws, such as shooting a police officer or bombing a government
building. The fact that he is a rebel is not, in itself,
considered illegal. There are no special laws designed to target
rebels, and in fact, numerous forms of public protest,
demonstration and civil disobedience are actually protected
by law. So we return to the question of: "how do we
specifically target rebels"? Well, one can hardly single
them out by waiting for them to break a general law- this is what
we do for all citizens. The only way to single out rebels
is to target their political beliefs. This is exactly what
real communist states have always done, and although neo-Marxists
claim that this isn't what Marx intended, they can't explain how
he planned to persecute "rebels" without
resorting to such measures.

"Centralization of credit in the banks of the
state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an
exclusive monopoly." Monopoly and state control are the
mantra of communism, but monopolies are always destructive.
Without competitive forces to ensure quality and efficiency,
monopolistic entities, whether they be corporations or government
agencies, invariably descend into wastefulness and sloth. This is
why Microsoft was brought up on charges by the United States
Department of Justice: competition is nature's way of ensuring the
strength of the species, and it has proven to be a good way to
ensure the strength of an economy as well. Furthermore,
competition means choice, and choice means that the buying
public has power.

"Centralization of the means of communication and
transport in the hands of the state." First rule of all
dictatorships: seize control of the radio stations, the telephone
system, and the newspapers. Neo-marxists claim that Marxism does
not necessarily lead to dictatorship, but it's hard to agree with
that claim when one of Karl Marx's ten commandments is the state
seizure of all "means of communication"! Such
far-reaching government power over communications can be abused to
muzzle miscreants or suppress public knowledge of state misdeeds
at any time, so it effectively removes freedom of expression.
Without freedom of expression, there can be no freedom at all. Of
course, it goes without saying that the seizure of transport has a
similar chilling effect on freedom of movement (not to mention the
power of the masses to punish or reward competing suppliers of
transportation services).

"Extension of factories and instruments of
production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of
waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in
accordance with a common plan." Broadening of state
industry- this is actually redundant, given his previous
statements. If the government has already seized all real estate,
it already controls all the factories. I'm not sure why this
directive was included at all.

"Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of
industrial armies, especially for agriculture." What
sounds better to you? Being paid to work, or being forced
to work? Choosing an employer based on pay and benefits, or being
forcibly conscripted into an "industrial army?" The
phrase "obligation to work" sounds better than "being
forced to work by threat of punishment", but without the
possibility of positive incentive, it means the same thing. Marx
would take away your freedom to choose not to work. Suppose you
decide that you would rather move to a small cabin up north, live
largely off the land, and do just a little bit of occasional work
for spending money? In a capitalist society, you would be forced
to adopt an austere lifestyle, but no one would stop you. But Karl
Marx would accuse you of not pulling your weight, and you would be
forced to go work the same way as everyone else.

"Combination of agriculture with manufacturing
industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town
and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over
the country." Like all advocates of social
re-engineering, he thinks that it should be possible to "turn
back the clock" on the process of industrialization. Sorry,
but there is no practical way to decentralize heavy manufacturing
operations so that they're spread out over the countryside like
primitive feudal farming operations. This is wishful thinking at
best, and sheer stupidity at worst.

"Free education for all children in public schools.
Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form.
Combination of education with industrial production, etc."
This sounds pretty good, and indeed, all civilized nations have
instituted public schools and made child labour illegal. But if
you read his full text, you will see that he is not merely
advocating the creation of public schools. He wants children to be
taken away from their parents and educated in state boarding
schools! And he is not trying to abolish child labour entirely,
he just wants to abolish child labour in its present form.
In its place, he suggests that schools and industrial factories be
merged into one, so that children work and go to school at the
same time. How charming.

The third section of "The Communist Manifesto" is a
largely forgettable collection of historical discussions of various
different socialist movements throughout history, as seen through
Marx's eyes. The fourth section is a short summation, which ends
with his infamous battle cry: "Workers of the world, unite!"
That's a great slogan, but it is backed with terrible logic. All of
his arguments follow the same pattern: take an aspect of society,
falsely claim that it is hopelessly broken and cannot possibly be
fixed under capitalism, and then leap headlong into the assumption
that the solution is state control.

At no time does he explain why the state is guaranteed to
outperform private industry or competitive mechanisms, nor does he
explain why the state is guaranteed not to abuse the massive powers
granted to it in his "utopian" plan. He creates a false
dilemma by claiming that we must choose between a hideously
distorted caricature of capitalism and his half-baked alternative,
and then he assumes that any flaw in capitalism (even imaginary ones
or strengths misrepresented as weaknesses) represents de facto
support for communism (the hidden assumption is that his half-baked
alternative schemes would solve the nonexistent or exaggerated
problems without introducing enormous problems of their own).

Conclusion

Communism isn't totally insane; we all have a little bit
of experience with it. After all, a healthy family's economy is
basically communist: mother and father put their earnings into a
common pool, draw from that common pool to finance purchases, and
share a common standard of living with their children. But that
model, as good as it is for a family, cannot be expanded into an
entire country.

A father may work hard for the benefit of his family, but he has
many motivations which don't apply to a worker toiling for his
country. The parental drive to provide for the children comes from
instincts hardwired into the human brain after millions of years of
evolution. No such evolutionary imperative drives people to toil for
an abstraction such as king and country. A father or mother receives
also direct benefits from the work they do for the family.
The same is supposedly true for communism, but when the size of the
"family" grows huge, the connection between work and
benefit becomes abstract. There is no immediate perceptible
change in the collective fortunes of the state when one worker
slacks off, unlike the change in a family's fortunes if Mom or Dad
slacks off.

There is one thing which a communist family and a communist state
do share: unfettered power for their leaders. If Mom and Dad
want to be abusive, the children have no recourse inside the family.
And if a communist government wishes to abuse its power, there are
no checks and balances to stop them. Parents are (ideally) kept from
abusing their power by the rule of law, but there are no credible
police forces for the misbehaving governments of the world. If
people can't always be trusted to resist the temptations of power
over their own children, how can any sane person claim that
politicians should be implicitly trusted to resist the temptations
of power over a population of total strangers?

When viewed through the eyes of history, the 20th century will be
remembered mostly for its startling rate of technological
advancement, the evil of Hitler and Stalin, and the utter failure of
communism. Neo-marxists expend a tremendous amount of effort to
whitewash this failure, but they cannot deny the fact that no one
has ever successfully implemented the philosophies of Karl Marx.
Every attempt to implement marxism has turned into a disastrous
dictatorship, in which the proletariat loved the communist lifestyle
so much that they would risk their very lives to escape it.

Many books have been written about why communism failed,
and a discussion of that subject is far beyond the scope of this
document. I'm only attempting to highlight obvious logical and
observational errors in "The Communist Manifesto," and to
show how ludicrous it is to use this document as the blueprint for a
modern society.